Union leaders don't heed worker needs

Boeing Corporation has built a new very large building for the production of their new 787 Dreamliner. Guess who wants to prevent the opening of this new business that will hire 1,000 new employees? The National Labor Relations Board has been convinced by the union hierarchy that a major company should not be allowed to move production of their new product from a union-controlled state (Washington) to the "right to work" state (South Carolina).

The problem is not the union vs the nonunion employee, but it is the ability of all employees to have the freedom to join or not to join a union. That has been the basis of America's work livelihood. The ruling leaders of the unions do not have the concern of workers' needs in their decisions. Also, since there is no government oversight of union leadership, the average union worker is at the mercy of compulsory unionism of this leadership. How many Americans realize that before the failure of GM and the stimulus debacle, GM was spending more in retirement benefits with no production return than they were in producing cars?

A business cannot succeed when the ratio of expenses for non-production exceeds the cost of production creating a means of profit. This was also the result of union control over the workers and the desire for excessive benefits that were unsustainable. Twenty-two states have the right-to-work laws to govern the freedom that we have enjoyed in the workplace in America. From 1999 to 2009, the aggregate real all-industry GDP of the 22 right-to-work states grew nearly 40 percent more than the gain registered by the other 28 states as a group. Personal incomes grew by an average of 24.3 percent in the right-to-work states, double that of the other 28 states.